Article by Erik Smith. Published on Saturday, February 13, 2010 EST.

Lengthy Debate Over Procedural Motion Has No Precedent, Observers Say – Just Wait for the Main Event

Rep. Doug Ericksen, R-Ferndale, rises to a point of personal privilege.

By Erik Smith

Staff writer/ Washington State Wire

OLYMPIA, Feb. 13.—In one of the strangest floor fights anyone in the Legislature can remember, Republicans in the state House managed to stop action for hours on a routine procedural motion – over a tax bill that isn’t routine at all.

            Senate Bill 6130 suspends Initiative 960, the measure that makes it all but impossible for lawmakers to raise taxes. Among other things, the 2007 initiative requires a two-thirds vote of the House and Senate before taxes can be raised, a rule that requires majority Democrats to look for help from Republicans.

            Republicans won’t give them the votes, Democrats say they have to raise taxes, and the simplest way around the problem is to get rid of the rule. The measure passed the Senate earlier in the week and is on the fast track to passage in the state House.

            That’s the background. But the spectacle that played out Friday night in the House showed that the battle over I-960 is no ordinary legislative snit.

            When the debate finally ended after two hours, a dumbfounded observer muttered, “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

            May be Without Precedent

            No one keeps track of such things, and the collective memory of those who work at the state Legislature extends no further than a single human lifetime. But none present in the state House could remember a debate like the one that took place Friday. It involved a routine procedural motion to send the bill to the House Finance Committee for consideration. It is a motion that is required of every bill that is considered by the Legislature, and it is made thousands of times every year. From the time the motion is introduced to the time the speaker raps his gavel, no more than 15 seconds elapse.

            But this time it took exactly two hours.

            Republicans challenged the motion. They said the bill shouldn’t go to the House Finance Committee. It should go to the House Community and Economic Development and Trade Committee instead, they said. They spent an hour debating that motion, and it was shot down 56 to 42.

            Then they moved that it be sent to the House State Government and Tribal Affairs Committee. Debate on that motion took another hour. It was defeated 53 to 41.

            Not that the Republicans ever had any chance of winning. They have just 37 votes out of the 98 in the state House.

But it’s a sign of what’s to come. Just wait until the bill comes before the House for a final vote. Yes, Democrats will win on that one, too, Republicans say. But they’re definitely not going to make it easy, and they vow to stretch out the pain as long as they possibly can.

            “You’ll see more debate on final passage,” said House Minority Leader Richard DeBolt, R-Chehalis. “Nine-sixty is designed to protect voters and allow them to be engaged, and they’re taking it away, and so it’s a very serious issue for us. So I told my members to feel free.”

            Just the Warm-Up

            In Friday’s debate, Republicans acknowledged that they were raising a technical point – and certainly House Speaker Frank Chopp, D-Seattle, proved willing to gavel them down the moment any of them strayed from the point to denounce the bill or the political party responsible for it.

            Rep. Doug Ericksen, R-Ferndale, advised the state House to think of the debate as something akin to the winter Olympics now under way in Vancouver.

             “Tonight we are going through the compulsories on figure skating, where you are rated on the technical merits of what you are able to achieve in the argument. And tomorrow, Mr. Speaker, I believe that we will enter the free-skate stage, where you win the gold medal through your creativity and your innovation in the debate that will come tomorrow night.”

            And so the debate went on, as Republicans gleefully argued that the tax restrictions imposed by I-960 were an economic development issue, or a matter of state law regarding initiative law and election procedure. Sometimes the argumentation seemed to reach a bit. For instance, House Majority Leader Lynn Kessler, D-Hoquiam, said that she has been inundated with emails arguing that 960 is the precursor to a tax increase. 

“If you had any question about that, Mr. Speaker, just read your emails. They’re very clear that we’re raising taxes with this bill. Therefore this bill is a revenue bill, and it should be heard in finance.”

Republicans drew a few conclusions from the statement. “This is an interesting debate already,” said state Rep. Bill Hinkle, R-Cle Elum. “I just heard from the good lady from the 24^th district that we’re going to be raising taxes.”

Republicans demanded a ruling from the chair: If Democrats admit that the bill raises taxes, then they should be allowed to argue about the motivations behind the bill. The Democratic speaker said no. That will come later.

           Will Get Another Chance

Ultimately the Republicans lost and the bill sailed on to the finance committee, where it was intended to go in the first place. A hearing is scheduled on the bill today.

“We’ve never had this kind of a debate before,” said Finance Chairman Ross Hunter, D-Medina. “I’d rather spend my time on substantive issues.”

And with a sigh, he said he expects similar partisan warfare to break out in his committee. And then the bill will inevitably pass, and then it will move back to the floor, and then there will be more argument, and then the bill will inevitably pass, too.

And so it goes.

One sidelight: There was a motion early in the process Friday that allowed the floor fight to get under way. It was a motion to consider the issue of which committee properly could consider the bill. That motion passed 55-43, and thus it meant that several Democrats voted with Republicans.

Ericksen said afterward that his side negotiated with the Democrats and came to an agreement about the motions that would be permitted on the floor. That’s why Republicans didn’t pull everything from the procedural bag of tricks: They might have filed dozens of parliamentary motions, and then demanded oral roll-call votes on each one. That process could have taken hours.

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